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Hearing witness promptly corrects AOC for spewing 'complete falsehood' about oil and gas emissions



Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) was promptly fact-checked on Tuesday after spewing a "complete falsehood" about greenhouse gas emissions.

At a House Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources hearing on the Biden administration's "mismanagement of the federal onshore oil and gas program," Ocasio-Cortez claimed that nearly one-quarter of U.S. "carbon pollution" comes from oil and gas drilling on federal lands.

"As it stands, nearly a quarter of the United States' current carbon pollution comes from fossil fuel production on federal lands and waters," she claimed.

But according to Kathleen Sgamma, president of the Western Energy Alliance, the New York Democrat is wrong.

Not only did Sgamma open her testimony by calling out Ocasio-Cortez for her "complete falsehood," but with data in hand, Sgamma corrected the record.

"I just want to start off by correcting something the ranking member said in her opening statement. She claimed that oil and gas production on federal lands is responsible for about a quarter of greenhouse gas emissions," Sgamma said.

"That's based on a misreading of a USGS study of greenhouse gas emissions," she explained. "And if you actually look at the numbers, production on federal lands and waters accounts for 0.6% of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions — not 'nearly a quarter.' Even the Interior Department stopped using that number after I simply pointed out the numbers from the USGS report."

Oversight Hearing | Energy and Mineral Resources Subcommittee www.youtube.com

Democrats often claim that a sizable chunk of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions come from drilling on federal lands to justify their push to end drilling on federal lands.

But it's simply not true. What is true, according to the USGS report cited at the hearing, is that "emissions from fossil fuels produced on Federal lands represent, on average, 23.7% of national emissions." But that doesn't mean drilling on federal lands is responsible for those emissions.

In fact, as Sgamma explained, the extraction of fossil fuels on federal lands accounts for a minuscule amount — 0.6% — of greenhouse gas emissions.

So where does the difference come from? As the Western Energy Alliance explains, the "vast majority" of emissions related to fossil fuels extracted from federal lands "comes from the end-use combustion of fossil fuels, not from the extraction."

It's the entire life cycle of those fuels, then — from extraction to combustion at their end point — that accounts for anything near what Ocasio-Cortez claimed.

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China's greenhouse gas emissions exceed every developed nation combined, researchers say



China produces more greenhouse gas emissions than any other developed nation in the world combined, according to new data.

What are the details?

Despite climate change alarmists who claim the U.S. has a problem with greenhouse gas emissions, a new report from the Rhodium Group exposes China as the world's overwhelming leader of greenhouse gas emissions.

Researchers said China was responsible for 27% of all greenhouse gas emissions in 2019, nearly three times the amount emitted by the United States and more than the entire developed world combined.

The U.S. contributed 11%, while India and the European Union were each over 6%.

Based on our newly updated estimates for 2019, global emissions reached 52 gigatons of CO2e in 2019, an 11.4% incre… https://t.co/BYXCO3ZDjk

— Rhodium Group (@rhodium_group) 1620315394.0

Shockingly, China's greenhouse gas emissions in 2019 have more than tripled since 1990, according to the Rhodium Group, when "China's emissions were less than a quarter of developed country emissions."

China's per capita emissions have also skyrocketed, according to Rhodium Group — but still significantly trail the U.S.

"China's 2019 per capita emissions reached 10.1 tons, nearly tripling over the past two decades. This comes in just below avg levels across the [Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development] bloc (10.5 tons), but still significantly lower than the US, which has the highest per capita emissions at 17.6 tons," the group tweeted.

The research group appeared to soften China's massive greenhouse gas output by explaining China is responsible for relatively less emissions than other developed countries that industrialized prior to China.

"China's history as a major emitter is relatively short compared to developed countries, many of which had more than a century head start. A large share of the CO2 emitted into the atmosphere each year hangs around for hundreds of years. As a result, current global warming is the result of emissions from both the recent and more distant past. Since 1750, members of the OECD bloc have emitted four times more CO2 on a cumulative basis than China," the group wrote.

What about 2020?

Preliminary data from 2020 show that, despite the COVID-19 pandemic, greenhouse gas emissions continued to rise in China.

"Based on preliminary economic and energy data, we estimate that total GHG emissions in China increased 1.7% in 2020, reaching 14,400 million metric tons (MMt) of CO2e," the Rhodium Group said.

"To put that figure in context, we estimate that is the equivalent of the total annual emissions of nearly 180 of the world's lowest-emitting countries combined," researchers explained.

Despite the massive amount of emissions, China signed the Paris climate agreement and Chinese President Xi Jinping has pledged to make China carbon neutral by 2060.